Artak1996 Artak

A Blitz Marathon

Artak1996 Artak, competing under the username Artak1995, is a blitz-first chess player who treats the 5+0 clock like a marathon sport. Since early 2013 he has piled up roughly 86,000 blitz games alone, enough to fill several lifetimes of evenings. His blitz journey is as dramatic as it is long, climbing to a peak of 2431 in July 2020 before reinventing himself at a different rate:

The Unconventional Opening Lover

If you want to know Artak, look at his first moves. As White he has a bizarre sweet spot for the Amar Gambit, which appears in more than 38,000 recorded blitz games and still yields a winning result nearly 57% of the time. As Black he adopts the Barnes Defense to answer 1.e4, creating weird and sharp positions that punish standard repertoire players. The one glaring exception is the French Defense, against which his win rate drops below 41%, a rare chink in his chaotic armour.

Rivals and Recurring Characters

No account has chased Artak more often than hichemhamila, their 284 meetings in a nearly even feud, with Artak just seven wins ahead. The fuller scarier puzzle is pekovski, who leads their series 94-57 in wins and has been a genuine nemesis. If there is a favorite victim, it is iparindra indra, against whom Artak has racked up 100 wins out of 136. Every player has secrets; those are his.

Streaks, Timings, and Flow

Artak is a player of extremes and stamina. His longest winning streak is 18, his longest losing streak 14. For whatever reason, his peak as an hour hand is 5am, when his win rate jumps beyond 55%, and Wednesday is his most successful day. His serious willpower shows in less typical stats: he plays endgames in over 80% of his games, and after losing a piece he still lands the full point more than half the time. He is also a streak-serious blitz specialist.

A quick look at every opening against his personal rhythm, the chart is worth it: